Hidden Costs if your Sales Team Builds your Own B2B Data

Business-to-business data, commonly known as B2B data, helps your company to identify new opportunities, find new customers, and essentially, make better decisions. 

Many companies might start with storing relevant information related to businesses they market or sell to at any given time. This type of pertinent B2B information may be held in a spreadsheet to store information on prospect companies, for example company names, employee names, email addresses, phone numbers and so on.

They quickly realize, however,  that to increase sales and revenue within the IT technology and service industries, they need data that can be used to generate quality leads. The problem is that these larger databases not only need to be maintained on a daily basis but must be updated promptly when new information is obtained by the sales team.

It’s also important to realize that all data must be thoroughly validated. That’s because inaccurate, missing or out-of-date data can result not only in poor quality leads but in missed opportunities and lost revenue. With good data, marketing campaigns reach their targets and sales teams successfully contact leads and close deals.

The question then arises – can you build your own database and collect the relevant data in-house or would you be better served by purchasing this information?

Your decision is likely to depend partly on the costs involved in these two strategies, but these costs are not straightforward. They don’t simply depend on the actual costs per lead, but the time, effort and resources required to build, maintain and continually update your CRM database must also be considered. 

Typical costs of buying data from a provider 

If you’re considering buying data from a provider, then you need to have some idea of the average costs you’ll likely encounter. These costs depend on many different factors, as an example, the costs per lead in 2022 for the marketing agency industry range from $22 to $173 with an average $99. 

For the IT industry, costs per lead range from $39 to $370 with an average of $208 and for the telecommunications industry, it’s between $24 and $64 with an average of $45.

The problem with acquiring data from an external source is that you need some assurances that the data is consistent, complete and correct. Otherwise, you need to check the validity of the data in-house before acting upon it. The costs involved in these types of checks can significantly increase the costs per lead. 

Problems with buying bulk B2B contact data lists

As mentioned above, buying bulk contact data lists can be problematic because the data might not be complete or accurate. Poor quality B2B contact data lists can result in high bounce rates, unopened emails and even SPAM complaints, all of which can negatively affect your company’s reputation. 

Old data: Even if the emails do not bounce back, it doesn’t mean that they have reached the correct people. Employees can change roles or leave companies and it can take time for emails to be removed or redirected. So just because an email address is still active, doesn’t mean that it will reach the intended contact person. 

Random data: Then there’s contact information for people who are not interested in your products or services but have been added to the list randomly. More than one unsolicited email might result in complaints of SPAM.

Incomplete data: Phone numbers and job roles can change over time, which means that the data has not been updated and will yield few positive results. Time is then spent in tracking down the relevant contact information.

With your core business goals focused on sales and revenue, you can’t afford to waste time and money validating B2B contact data lists. 

Hidden costs of bad data

We have just mentioned the overt costs of buying bulk B2B contact but there are hidden costs as well, primarily in validating the acquired data to ensure that it’s complete, up to date and relevant. This task often falls to your sales team who need to spend valuable time checking and correcting this data, before contacting any potential clients.

In essence, your sales team spends too much time correcting bad data and building your contact list instead of prospecting. This reduces productivity as they struggle to locate the missing data or try to contact people based on inaccurate information. 

It can be difficult to estimate these hidden costs, but in 2021, Gartner found that organisations lose an average $12.9 million USD every year to bad data. Another study of 1500 IT decision makers by Veritas found that IT leaders wasted 2 hours every day searching for relevant data. Furthermore, 35% stated that day to day data management issues resulted in missed revenue opportunities, whilst 19% stated that over the long term they experienced damage to their brand and reputation.

When you add the costs of hiring, training and employing professional sales people to the cost of purchasing poor quality B2B contact data and the time spent by your sales team in validating this data, the hidden costs can escalate quickly. This doesn’t sound like a process that’s actually going to result in higher sales and revenue.

How do you overcome these hidden costs?

Poor quality data leaves you wondering how much of the purchased data was refreshed in the past 12 months. It also brings to mind the missed opportunities, lost revenue and negative effects that poor quality B2B contact data can have on your reputation. On the other hand, the better the data, the greater the opportunities that can be realised; your sales team feels valued, productivity increases and the higher the revenue that can be generated. 

The solution is to access good quality data, which is why you need to leverage the expertise of a data research team who are experts in data acquisition, storage, modelling and administration. Given the amount of data that needs to be analysed, they are vital in providing IT companies with large volumes of accurate and up to date B2B contact data.

The best data research teams are highly experienced in establishing the consistency, completeness and correctness of data. They can for example, provide ad hoc analyses, as well as use machine learning to identify behavioural patterns, predict trends and recommend future strategies. Once they understand your company’s needs, a data research team becomes an invaluable source of actionable data for your company.

Contrast these data research teams with your sales professionals who are experts at contacting and nurturing leads. The additional value provided by a dedicated data research team to identify up to date contact data can escalate the productivity of your sales team who can focus on what they do best - nurturing leads.

DataList – providers of specialist data research teams

DataList provides custom built B2B data that’s individually researched for your specific requirements. This data is developed by our data research teams to help your sales team save both time and resources that would otherwise be wasted on bad data.

Our dedicated data researchers find the single source of truth or golden records for your business and verify all contact data. This verification is performed by data researchers in the Asia Pacific by cross referencing a variety of sources along with a proprietary database of 80 million records. 

To find out how you can access reliable B2B data for your company, don’t hesitate to contact us today!